Democracy Italian style: singing from many song sheets

Date: February 27 2013

THE Italian people have spoken in national elections this week, but what are the citizens of the world's eighth biggest economy telling us?

The leader of the centre-left, Pier Luigi Bersani, looks likely to be appointed prime minister but his mandate rests on a sliver of the popular vote in an election marred by a disappointing turnout of 55 per cent.

Bersani edged ahead with 29.6 per cent of the vote to Silvio Berlusconi's 29.2 per cent, though a ''winner's premium'' will give him a majority in the 630-seat lower house. Not so in the Senate and, because an Italian government requires a majority in both houses, the hapless electorate - or the ever-decreasing numbers that can be bothered - may have to troop to the polls again this year.

Former comedian Beppe Grillo's 5-Star Movement emerged as the new third political force. ''We'll have 110 people in parliament and we'll be millions outside,'' he boasted.

For two decades one man has embodied the world's view of Italian politics: cruise-ship crooner cum media mogul Berlusconi, 76.

After the election he stood, neither embraced nor fully rejected by the voters. His party will be the largest single force in the Senate, where no party has a majority. And both houses must assent to proposed laws.

Naturally the sharemarkets are nervous. The electorate is meant to embrace economic austerity. But democracy doesn't always respect markets. The anti-austerity candidates, Berlusconi and Grillo, scored about 55 per cent of the vote.

Italian politics is wont to throw down special challenges about democracy. Many of these have been embodied by the super-rich, scandal-prone, irrepressible and fossilised playboy Berlusconi.

Detractors say if Berlusconi is able to generate such a positive profile and, if the system is unable to throw up an appealing alternative, perhaps Italy is best served by apolitical governments such as the outgoing one headed by the technocrat Mario Monti.

Here was a man regarded by the markets, the US and European leaders west of Russia as a safe pair of hands, but who could win barely 10 per cent of the vote and a fourth placing.

Undoubtedly, the grim economic fortunes of Europe have clouded voters' outlooks. As one observer, Alberto Gallo, commented: ''The political situation across Europe is effectively a race between austerity and reforms on the one hand and the rise of populist movements on the other.''

Gallo, head of European macro credit research at Royal Bank of Scotland Group, added: ''Austerity is painful and, if reforms are not implemented in time, you run the risk of social unrest and populism. It hasn't happened so far in Greece, it hasn't happened in Portugal or Spain, but we are very close in Italy.''

Democracy often conjures up messy spectacles. Political inaction on climate change did not help its cause in Australia, where a Lowy Institute survey found that among a big minority of youth it was not automatically considered the best system. Still a fragile plant in much of Europe, democracy is going through a crisis of confidence. Italian politicians will have to muddle through.

And the economy has certain strengths not shared by its apparently stronger neighbours. ''The nation is richer than Germany in per capita terms, with some €9 trillion ($11.1 trillion) of private wealth,'' reported Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in the Telegraph in London two months ago.

''It has the biggest primary budget surplus in the G7 bloc. Its combined public and private debt is … lower than in France, Holland, Britain, the United States or Japan.''

But rising taxes, part of the austerity measures, have hit consumer spending; one in three young people is out of work, and there has been an explosion in gambling addiction among a formerly frugal populace.

There is no shortage of individual ingenuity in Italy's messy system. But the time for crooners and comedians has long passed.

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